Freakin’ Fantastically Fun Friday!

Or as I like to call it, “FFFF.” Much to the discontent of anybody within range of my spit.

So, my very dear and amazingly awesome friend Erin (visit her blog here) was sweet enough to include me in a post concerning her favorite blogs that she enjoys visiting, so I figured I should probably cook up a nice little post. Had some fun stuff happen in the past couple weeks, so here’s a rapid fire update for you, starting with something incredibly exciting.

I got a haircut.

Okay, okay, I’m sorry.

I grilled a heart-shaped ribeye for Jenn and me on Valentine’s Day.

I used a new seasoning on it that I hadn’t used before, much to the delight of my easily amused palate. Jenn loved it, too. She cooked a mean pot roast that day for lunch. Our V-Day gift to each other was to stay at home and cook for each other. Best V-Day ever, seriously.

It snowed shortly before V-Day.

Just a little.

Some jerk kids knocked over our snowman. Here’s a dramatic reenactment of the discovery from after our second snowman fell over on its own…

Also, here’s Maddie catching a snowball.

Words With Friends is awesome. Here’s a screencap of the most epic opening word I’ve ever started a game with.

You can see my username on there, so feel free to challenge me. It’s a fun little diversion when I have some downtime at work.

I found this really awesome artist who makes some killer poster art based on favorite comic book characters. Here are two of my favorites, Green Lantern and Iron Man.

I especially love that GL poster. I mean, GL’s my favorite in general, but that’s just cool in its simplicity. Wish I had it framed for my nonexistent man cave. Heck, might as well throw in that Iron Man poster, too, if we’re talking nonexistent things. 🙂

Let’s see, what else? School’s going okay, graduation’s getting closer and closer. Work’s going fine, even though I’m beyond ready to move up into the world of teaching.

Jenn and I doing marvelously. We had our first premarital counseling session with our pastor and his wife last Sunday, and we’ll do our second/last one this Sunday. Planning the wedding and the honeymoon have really brought us together as a team more than ever before, and it makes me all the more excited to tackle life together with her.

Speaking of the honeymoon, I’ve been using Yelp and this excellent book to assemble a “bucket list” of sorts of restaurants and other stuff we have to check out while we’re in Kauai. It’s turning into quite a list, and I’m having a blast compiling all this info. There’s so much to do during the week that we’ll be there, and we’re so freakin’ excited about it. 🙂

Guess that’s about it for now. I hope you have a blessed and FFFF.

Excuse me, I need to get a paper towel.

Get back up.

We lose our way, we get back up again…
— tobyMac (new single “Get Back Up”)

I had a bit of a revelation last night while going through my almost-nightly “OMG praise God for bringing an end to this day” detox session.

Actually, let me backpedal a bit. Hi! Been a while since I really posted anything of substance, hasn’t it? I think after I came to the decision that Jenn and I will start a new blog together after we get married, I lost a lot of interest in keeping this one updated. Is that going to change? Prob’ly not. But this really is something weighing heavy on my heart, so we’re gonna pretend for today.

Okay, fast forward to the past couplethree weeks. Long story short, a whole lot of crap has happened to me recently. Just within the past two weeks or so:

* My laptop was stolen out of my bag at work.

* My iPhone was completely erased while trying to sync it with the “loner” netbook that my mother has been gracious enough to share with me.

* I did something to my right shoulder back on Jan. 31st that has resulted in very annoying and persistent pain going from my shoulder blade down to my elbow ever since then.

* I dropped my iPhone and broke yet another case.

* Got a pretty yucky sinus infection last week that resulted in me missing half a day of work and two nights of school.

* The back door on the driver’s side of my car would not close securely yesterday, resulting in me having to find a ride to work and being thirty minutes late.

The grand prize of this whole mess is me being within a hairsbreadth of finding the nearest cave and hiding in it until the Rapture. Until last night. Like I said before, I had a bit of a revelation. This is prob’ly something that would’ve come to other folks I know in a more timely fashion, but heck, I’m just glad it finally dawned on me.

In this day and age, what do you think when someone says, “The devil is at work here?” For me, personally, that reminds me of when I had Dr. Allan Saxe for Texas Government a couple years back. He had a habit of mouthing off some hilarious-yet-terribly demeaning jokes that were guaranteed to offend every culture/gender/species in attendance at least once every evening. After he would blurt out such a joke, he would clap his hand over his mouth, then comically say, “I am so sorry. The DEVIL made me do it!”

I think this is a pretty dang good example of how people look at the devil’s influence these days. It’s hilarious. It’s not real. People have control over their own destinies, and there’s no sulfur-sucking freakshow doing this stuff to me, right?

Not necessarily.

Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.
— 1 Peter 5:8

So, is the devil at work in my life right now? Could be. It’s possible he’s trying to distract me from the most important things right now: God, Jenn, and school. He’s using what I like to call R&D. Not research and development, not raspberries and donuts (though that would probably work just as well as everything else he’s been doing to distract me), but Ruses and Deceptions. Stuff keeps getting thrown at me to distract me from focusing on getting stuff done for school, plus it’s distracting me from continuing to nurture my relationship with Jenn as we prepare to get married. Not to mention the fact that my laptop got stolen from me shortly after I just started doing some serious graphics work for my church.

What if it’s the other way around, though? What if God is T&B‘ing me? Okay, sorry, too many letters&letters. Testing and Blessing me.

The LORD your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul.
— Deuteronomy 13:3b

We know God tests us. It’s part of the whole deal. So it’s totally possible that this is just another test of faith by Him.

But at the same time, I can also see some of this stuff as a real blessing. Well, two things mainly. I mean, breaking my iPhone case was somewhat of a blessing, because it resulted in me getting an even sweeter case for about half the price of the last one. But anyway, the two things I think of as a blessing in disguise were probably the two worst things on that list up there: My laptop getting stolen and my iPhone getting wiped.

A little over three years ago, when I first started dating Jenn, I was on the tail end of a serious addiction to World of Warcraft. I realized shortly into our relationship how much of a detriment that addiction was to our quality time together, so I closed my account and I haven’t been back since. I thank God every day for that, because it was His way of intervening before I became a hardcore gamer and wasted my life away in that crappy old apartment, eating Jack in the Box tacos every night and playing WoW.

But then my laptop was stolen, and being without it has made me realized that said addiction wasn’t quite out of my life. For a short while after the incident, I was suffering from (and I apologize, because I know this sounds a tad melodramatic) my own personal equivalent to phantom limb syndrome. Over the past four or five years, I had turned that laptop into another appendage. If I needed anything, I knew that my laptop could help me. And so when my laptop was stolen, well, you can guess how I reacted. Devastated, completely and utterly. I was seriously depressed, like I had no idea how I was going to do just about anything in life without that laptop.

Then my iPhone did it’s thing, and that just made me feel crappier. What the heck was going on with my stuff!? I was getting pissed. My usual methods of communicating and general “doing stuff” were rebelling on me. How am I going to function without a working iPhone and a laptop that’s been taken from me?

Then, after the 800th time that thought crossed my mind, I finally realized just how absurd it was.

How am I going to function without Facebook? Twitter? Photoshop? Office?

See where I’m going with this?

The devil may be taking advantage of the situation by trying to distract me by worrying about all this stuff. But GOD is waking me up from this technologically-induced state of dependency. Through the theft of my laptop, He’s giving me an NCIS-caliber smack on the backside of the head and going, “HEY. Quit it.”

I don’t NEED this stuff. It’s nice to have, yes. But if it’s gone, then it’s gone. There is absolutely no reason for me to get so sad about not being able to get online. My laptop was not another arm, it was just a tool. A tool that I had a bad habit of getting too absorbed in using. And I needed to learn my lesson about getting too far into it.

So, where do I go from here? Do I shun technology? Do I sell my iPhone?

Pff, no. 🙂 I need to remember that the key is to not let myself get absorbed. I’m not missing out on anything epic if I don’t login to Facebook whenever I have down time. I don’t need to tweet every other thought I think or action I… act.

Granted, losing my Photoshop sucks, because I was just getting started on doing some fun stuff for my church. But it’s okay, because I know I’ll still be able to help whenever I can.

As I look back on all this now that I’ve typed it out… man, it looks really silly. In the grand scheme of things, of all the terrible stuff going on in this world, my biggest problem right now is getting over losing a computer. But hey, the little victories in life at just as nice, right? A win is a win, and anything that helps me clear out the clutter, get closer to God, and focus on what’s REALLY important in my life (ie. marrying the girl of my dreams) is a tremendous victory, as far as I’m concerned.

All I have to remember is that it’s just stuff. This stuff, I can live without. This stuff, I can lose without breaking my heart. Being without this stuff will not keep my life from going on. Stuff, I don’t need.

What I do need is my Lord. What I do need is my beautiful fiancée. What I do need is to finish school so I can make a better future for my wife and me.

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.

January 12, 2007.

Three years ago today, I met the love of my life. The girl of my dreams, and the woman I am going to marry five months from today.

Father God, thank you for blessing me with Jennifer. Thank you for bringing her into my otherwise geeky and lame life. Thank you for pulling me out of the crap I was in and giving me the one I will be spending the rest of my life with.

Back to the Fyootcha!

So I figured to commemorate the last months of this blog’s existence, I’d go back to the theme I started out with. Sweet memories. Or something like that.

This Christmas break was just awesome. Got spoiled with all the lovely gifts from my family, the future in-laws, and Jenn. Got the LEGO Grand Carousel, a safety razor shaving kit from Jenn (I am all that is man), some killer binoculars with a built-in digital camera, assorted gift cards, and some very comfy slippers, among other things. I got Jenn the Eternal Love Cross pendant from James Avery, and she wears it every day now. It looks amazing on her. Oh, and we got a Wii! And Jenn got Wii Fit+ and that Jenny McCarthy workout game that comes with a camera that watches to make sure you’re doing the exercises right. Kinda creepy, but it should be fun. Haha!

One of the best things about Christmas this year, hands down, was that we finally got a White Christmas!

It snowed like the dickens on Christmas Eve. Like, blowing sideways and prohibiting your vision… dickens. Yeah, anyway, it calmed down overnight, but it was still BEAUTIFUL for Christmas Day. That was such an awesome treat. Wish it would snow again, as cold as it is outside. We’re supposed to see the coldest temperatures in a loooooong time around here starting tomorrow night. Like, wind chills around 0 degrees in the evenings. Yay!

We went to City Streets in Sundance Square for New Year’s Eve. It was fun to do some dancing with Jenn (and Misty made a friend that she danced with all night, hehe). And at midnight, Jenn and I looked at each other and said, “Now we can finally say ‘We’re getting married this year!'” LOL

Speaking of that, we got the tuxes picked out for me, the groomsmen, the dads, and the ringbearers. They look pretty dang slick, I can’t wait to see how we all look together. Along with that, over the holiday, Jenn’s also been working on some paper mache letters for a couple of the tables at the reception. She has some that spell out “WE DO” for the cake table, and “love is sweet” for our candy buffet table. They look really pretty, she’s done an excellent job with them.

Got some pretty big stuff ahead of me in the next couple months. Not only am I applying to graduate, but I’m going to be taking the TExES on February 6th. For those of you who don’t know, that’s the state certification exam that all Texas teachers have to take. And I’m taking it a month from tomorrow. Whoa! Talk about surreal, huh? I can’t believe I’m finally at this point. I get butterflies thinking about it. After ten years of jackin’ around and not knowing what to do with my life, I’m finally about to step into not only married life, but a full-on professional life. I think I may go get some of those paper mache letters, spell out “paraprofessional” with them, and burn them in a celebratory bonfire. 🙂

Anyway, say a prayer for us. These five months leading up to graduation and the wedding are going to be completely crazy, and Jenn and I are gonna need all the support we can get.

Oh, and we saw Sherlock Holmes. Frickin’ SWEET movie. I so want the soundtrack.

“Well it’s aaall right, we’re goin’ to the end of the line!”

So I made a pretty big decision this past weekend. While we were deep in the heart o’ Texas visiting my mom’s family (Jenn had an absolute blast, by the way), I got to thinking about how life will be for us once we’re married. I mean, I’ve thought about our married life since a few months into our relationship, but I digress. Anyway, I was thinking about this blog, and I asked myself, do I really need to keep up with this after we’re married? How much time will I be taking away from our quality time if I continue to update a blog that’s just for my life as an individual?

So I made a choice. I’m going to officially end this blog when we get married in June.

Now now, friend, dry those tears (haha!). I’ll still be around. In fact, I’ve already registered a NEW blog for both Jenn and myself to use after we’re married. Plus, I’ve registered another blog that we will be using for a specific purpose. I don’t want to say anything about it, but I think y’all are really going to get a kick out of it. It’s something else I thought up while we were on the road this weekend. And now I’ll stop talking about it, because I REALLY wanna tell y’all about it, but I want it to stay a surprise! GAH, I’m terrible at this. 🙂

Anyway, I’ll update here as much as I can over the next six months or so. Obviously, I’ve been more and more infrequent with the updates lately, and it’ll prob’ly stay that way until the end of the road here. But I do hope you’ll stick around until then. And once I’m done here, I hope you’ll check out our new blog when we get started on it. And that other blog, too. Y’know, the surprise one. Teehee.

BTW, in case you didn’t notice (and seriously, are you blind?), changed the theme here for the Christmas season. Yay!

Have a great day, friend!

Hawaii, here we come!

So on Friday night, Jenn and I went with my folks to see the travel agent, and we are now officially going to Kauai, HI, for our honeymoon! A week of fun in the sun, baby! WOO-HOO!

Jenn and I are just beside ourselves now that the plans are set in stone. Reading the brochures and talking about what all we’re going to do on the trip has just made us all sorts of giddy. And the wedding is still a little over six months away! LOL!

LOUD NOISES.

It could only be Friday.

I have a new theory about morning traffic around my place of employment. I’m calling it Big C’s Theory of Student/Rain Relationships:

“On any given day, the length of the tardy lines outside the Assistant Principals’ offices is directly proportionate to how much it’s been raining that morning.”

Seriously, friend, you can put money on that. It’s absolutely absurd how late the students are when there’s rain coming down. And apparently, I had the blessed luck of being behind most of these kids on the road this morning. As a result, I was a couple of minutes late. Lame.

Anyway, TGIF. I’m going to get my hurah cut after school, then Jenn and I are meeting my dad at his travel agent’s office so we can figure out our honeymoon to Hawaii. To say we’re excited is a bit of an understatement. 🙂 Have a great weekend!

All quiet on the… laboratorial front….

No classes in either lab this afternoon. It’s exquisitely quiet here right now. Just how I wanted to end my week.

We celebrated Jenn’s birthday last night with her mom. Her dad was off on a fishing trip, so he couldn’t make it. But it was cool, we still had a lot of fun. Went to Olive Garden for dinner and got nice and stuffed there. Then we went back to Jenn’s for some cake. Little did I know that this was not just a cake… it was a Cheesecake Factory red velvet cake cheesecake. O. M. G. Let me tell you, friend, thanks to the night we first tried it at the CF for her mom’s bday, this is seriously my new favorite cheesecake.

It’s a layer of red velvet cake, a layer of cheesecake, another layer of red velvet, another layer of cheesecake, cream cheese frosting, and white chocolate shavings along the edge. WOWEE WOW WOW. Not only that, but Jenn’s mom got some Blue Bell Southern Hospitality ice cream to go with it. That sucker’s loaded. It’s vanilla ice cream with cherries, pineapple, pecans, and a strawberry swirl. Talk about a deadly combination with the cheesecake, huh? Needless to say, I was amazingly stuffed when it was all said and done. Good times, good times.

Oh, and for her birthday, Jenn’s mom got her all three boxes of our new dishes that we registered for at Bed, Bath, and Beyond! They look REALLY slick…

Jenn was SO cute when she opened the wrapped boxes. She was all giggly and excited, it was greatness.

So tonight, we’re gonna eat somewhere cheap, then go to the Highlands to look at furniture. Tomorrow, Jenn and her bridesmaids are all going to Ocone’s to pick out the bridesmaids’ dresses. While they’re doing that, I will be taking a nap, and it will be awesome. Dunno what we’re doing after that, though. At one point, we were talking about going to Crystal’s Pizza with Angela and James and the girls, but I’m not sure if that’s happening still. Guess we’ll just play it by ear. I’m just glad we’ll get to hang out with them regardless. 🙂

Guess that’s all I got for now. Have a great weekend, friend!

Relief.

Well, thank God that’s over with. The Archaeology test I’ve been sweating over has been vanquished. I think I did a pretty darn good job on it, so hopefully the good doctor will see it the same way.

Big weekend ahead! Jenn and I are going to register at Home Depot, which will be our last one on the list. After that, we’re gonna go eat with Misty and then take a look at some furniture at the furniture store over in the Highlands. What is it, Ethan Allen? The one by PF Chang’s, whatever it is. Anyway, tomorrow is All Hallow’s Eve. Along with the el cheapo masquerade we’re gonna enjoy with the fam and some friends tomorrow night, I’ve volunteered my car as part of the church’s Trunk or Treat party tomorrow afternoon. If you’ve never heard of this, basically church members line up their cars in the parking lot, decorate ’em all spiffy, and the kids go around trickrtreatin’ for candy from the trunks. It’s meant to be a super-safe way for the kiddos to enjoy Halloween without worrying about evil folks out there in the world. Should be a lot of fun. I heard through the grapevine that everyone’s doing a fall/harvest theme with their vehicles. I’m like, UM WUT!? I’m so turning the trunk of my car into a monster mouth. Rawr! Happy Halloween!

I know, it’s a little early.

So, this was a nice weekend. Went to choir practice on Saturday morning with Jenn. I don’t think I’m going to sing in the Christmas pageant, but it was still fun to hang out and hear everyone sing. It’s sounding fantastic, I cannot wait for the holidays. 🙂

On that note, I was talking to Jenn about this on Saturday afternoon, and I think it’s true. I think people REALLY need to get Christmas’d up this year. The way the country is going lately, we are in such a deep state of depression, and we need some holiday spirit up in this joint. Now, I’m not talking about presents. This is definitely going to be a lean Christmas this year, that’s a fact. I’m talking about everything else. Christmas trees, Christmas music, Christmas smells, Christmas sounds, Christmas specials on TV… You know, the blitz that always really starts the weekend after Thanksgiving. Not the Black Friday aspect, but the seasonal aspect. Just the feeling of the holiday season. You know, that warm and cozy feeling! It’s something I’ve just been craving lately, personally, and I think a lot of people feel the same way and don’t realize it.

Along that line, I’ve noticed in recent years since I’ve really dedicated my life to Christ, that warm and cozy feeling is even better. Something changes in you when you get saved (well, a lot of things change in you, but that’s not the point), and in the weeks leading up to December 25th (yes, I know that’s not necessarily his REAL birthday…), if you let it in, that awesome feeling you get knowing that you’re preparing to celebrate the birth of Jesus is one of the most comforting and wonderful feelings you’ll ever experience in this life. I remember watching “The Nativity Story” with Jenn last year for the first time. I never got to see it when it came out in theaters, and she has it on DVD. Anyway, THAT is an awesome movie. If you ever get a chance, watch it. The way they act out the story is just fantastic, especially the birth of Jesus at the end of the movie. It’s some of the most moving stuff I’ve seen on film, and it’s definitely something we’ll be watching every Christmas now.

Anyway, long story short, I think we’re all going to benefit from having a sweet little Christmas this year. Focus on your family, your friends, and Jesus. This year is as good a time as ever to start doing so, if you haven’t yet. We’re all blessed in so many little (and big) ways, and given the nature of the world right now, we should be grateful for all that we have.

… Man, I guess that was weighing heavier on my heart than I thought it was. It’s not even Halloween yet! LOL

Anyway, back to Saturday. Fun day. Okay, got it. After we went to choir practice, Jenn had a dentist appointment, and then we went to Bed, Bath, & Beyond to create a wedding registry there. We ended up spending at least three hours there working on our registry. It’s definitely our biggest one yet, but it’s mostly made up of little things, like, towels, picture frames, and kitchen utensils. Lots of cool stuff. 🙂

Jenn sang Revelation Song in church on Sunday. It was absolutely amazing. Folks were kidding around with me about the performance after church, though. The way the orchestra is setup on stage, I sit directly behind where the preacher stands at the pulpit. So as a result, when Jenn was standing there singing, I was sitting right behind her. And I was mouthing the words to the song the entire time. LOL! I wasn’t the only one, there were many folks in the congregation doing the same thing. But since I’m her fiance, and we were BOTH on camera at the time, I was the one who was given heck about it. Haha!

Next weekend, we’re going to try again to have the big tent service out on the new property. There’s rain in the forecast for a couple days this week, so I can’t say I’m fully confident it’s gonna work out. I really hope it does, though, because this time we’ll also be celebrating our first Sunday with our new music minister. Seems to me like that’s some good timing, so hopefully it’ll work out and the field will be nice and dry(ish) for Sunday. Here’s hoping!